GOP: Save Browner documents

House Science Committee Republicans are asking President Obama to ensure that records associated with outgoing top White House climate and energy adviser Carol Browner are preserved.

“Ms. Browner and her staff are central figures in many decisions and issues of interest to the House Science, Space and Technology Committee,” according to a letter that Chairman Ralph Hall (R-Texas) and three other senior Republicans on the panel sent late Tuesday.

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The Republicans are asking for all documents – which they say “is to be construed in the broadest sense” – associated with the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy and particularly those of Browner and her deputy Heather Zichal to be retained.

Browner is leaving the administration and the expectation is for the dismantling of the White House office she led – which was central in the administration's efforts to build support for last year’s attempts on Capitol Hill to pass broad climate and energy legislation.

The request comes ahead of what Republicans promise will be likely hearings in the Science Committee over the science behind climate change – with Republicans on the panel readying to use their louder mouthpiece in the House majority to deny or at the very least call the science into question.

Broun, for example, has called climate change a "hoax" that has been "perpetrated out of the scientific community." Hall has said he is concerned climate science has been manipulated, while Sensenbrenner was handpicked by House Republican leaders to be the conservative volley to Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) on House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi's now-defunct energy and global warming select committee in the previous two Congresses.

Meanwhile, other House Republcians also want a part of Browner’s files. Former Energy and Commerce Chairman Joe Barton (R-Texas) Wednesday told a hearing audience that “I’d hope we'd be able to get Carol Browner's private correspondence."

Democrats for their part say they welcome the chance to highlight overwhelming backing in the scientific community for the conclusion that humans are causing climate change.

Republicans are also following the conservative handbook by using as justification for Tuesday’s letter to Obama a decade-old controversy involving documents related to Browner’s term as head of the EPA under President Clinton.

There is no evidence at all suggesting that there has, is or will be any effort to tamper with documents by Obama administration officials, including Browner herself.

The Science Committee Republicans are pointing to a July 2003 ruling by U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth holding the EPA in contempt for disobeying an order to preserve Browner’s electronic records that were requested by the conservative Landmark Legal Foundation.

“It would be a great disservice to the nation if something similar happened again,” they wrote.

Lamberth declined to hold Browner, EPA officials or the U.S. Attorney’s Office in contempt in that case. He had issued a protective order on Jan. 19, 2001, the day before the Clinton administration ended, instructing EPA to preserve all documents that might be relevant to a Freedom of Information Act request Landmark had issued regarding agency contacts with outside groups.

Browner testified in the district court that she asked a technician to delete her computer files the same day Lamberth ordered them to be preserved.

But Browner also said at the time that “she usually didn't use her computer for work or e-mail, hadn't been notified about the court order and had wanted to remove some computer games her son had installed on her work computer,” according to a July 2003 Associated Press article. Browner's attorney added that Browner had wanted to make sure her work computer was appropriately formatted for her successor in the George W. Bush administration, AP reported at the time.

EPA though later acknowledged it had wiped clean the computer files from Browner and other top staff despite Lamberth's order.

That's all you need to know about the EPA. It has no interest whatsoever in serving the needs of the country, only wishing to serve the needs of the enviromentalists. Who needs the Department of Energy when every rule and regulation passed by EPA is determined to wipe out any use of fossil fuels. Nuclear energy? Forgettaboutit, with EPA hamstringing via air quality and water regulations. EPA has America's economic future by the throat!

The only hoax here is the Republican party and their lying to the American people on every issue. That is the hoax and the quicker the American people wake up and smell the roses, the better off we will be.